Question: Is swordfish a kosher fish?
Maybe. Is that a frustrating enough answer? I’ll explain.
The Torah specifies (Leviticus 11:9-10) that we can only eat fish that have both fins and scales. Swordfish (Xiphias gladius) are born with scales, but they are shed when they reach adulthood. So do swordfish count as having scales?
Help us keep Jewish knowledge accessible to millions of people around the world.
Your donation to My Jewish Learning fuels endless journeys of Jewish discovery. With your help, My Jewish Learning can continue to provide nonstop opportunities for learning, connection and growth.
Jewish legal authorities have differed on this question over the centuries, a history traced by Ari Zivotofsky in his landmark article, “The Turning of the Tide: The Kashrut Tale of the Swordfish.” The details are complex, but in short, because the Talmud identifies a fish that is probably swordfish as being kosher, the Jewish legal tradition has not been able to say definitively that swordfish is not kosher — even though, if you look at a swordfish, it seems not to have scales.
Swordfish thus exist in a space of ambiguity. You can make a good argument either way with regard to the kashrut of swordfish, and whichever position you take, you have both textual and biological data you can use for justification. And throughout history, we find Jewish communities that have eaten swordfish and communities that haven’t. To an extent, each answer is good and plausible in its own space.
Whether you consider swordfish kosher may depend on your own communal identity. Do you belong to a community with a common practice about eating swordfish? If so, then enjoy. If not, there may be value in not distancing yourself by adopting more idiosyncratic practices, even if they are justified. There’s also a value in not being too in-your-face when you embrace a lenient position in front of stricter people. At the same time, a person’s spirituality should not devolve into mere conformism. What one truly feels and thinks is not a small thing to be discarded.
Is swordfish kosher? The answer is that it depends. It depends on matters of fins and scales, and also on matters of the spirit and the heart.
Rabbi Eric Woodward is the rabbi of Congregation Beth El — Keser Israel in New Haven, Connecticut. He was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and is an alumnus of Yeshivat Hadar.
